“Die Blaue Blume, the Blue Flower, is a central symbol of Romanticism for longing, love, and a striving for the unattainable. For the poets of the piano, Robert Schumann and Frédéric Chopin, individual expression is of fundamental importance. Schumann prefaced the score of his great Fantasy in C Major with a quotation from a poem by Friedrich Schlegel, which expresses the essential idea of the Blue Flower: Through all the notes, In earth’s many-coloured dream, There sounds one soft long-drawn note, For the one who listens in secret. The Blue Flower is a symbol rich in substance and can be a useful key for anyone seeking his own tone, his own expression, also beyond the sphere of Romanticism. The quality of this symbol was for me one vantage point in my encounter with the work of Torstein Aagaard-Nilsen”. Rune Alver tells in the program book.

“BLUE TRACES is the result of a collaboration I have had with pianist Rune Alver since 2006. Torstein Aagaard-Nilsen tells. At that time he challenged me to compose pieces for solo piano inspired by paintings of contemporary Norwegian artists. The last of these three was premiered during the summer of 2009. The pieces were subsequently revi sed and fused into asingle work. In the course of doing so, I worked closely with Rune, in part at his initiative. Never before have I conceded this degree of influence over the composing process to a performing artist. Nothing new was added during the revision; indeed, the three movements were shortened significantly to achieve a natural unity. Of crucial importance here was Rune’s experience of having performed the pieces individually. For it is the performing artist, in fact, who is best able to apprehend the form in real time. I have had great benefit of his observations and suggestions. Still, the key decisions are my own, and with the choice of the title Blue Traces, the three movements join the series of blue works composed over the last years”. Blue Traces is dedicated to Rune Alver. Torstein Aagaard-Nilsen

RUNE ALVER made his debut as pianist at the age of twenty. He was born in Bergen and educated at Bergen Music Conservatory and the Norwegian Academy of Music, where he received his diploma in 1986. He studied for two years with Vlado Perlemuter in Paris, and he has participated in international master classes. Rune Alver has performed at a number of international music festivals and participated in productions of Norwegian Television and Radio (NRK), as well as of the French radio station France Musique. His recent concert venues have included the Edvard Grieg Museum in Bergen, the Mendelssohn Haus in Leipzig, the Grieg Begegnungsstätte in Leipzig, the Glinka Museum of Musical Culture in Moscow, and Les Invalides, Grand Salon, in Paris. Rune Alver has also been invited to perform in Moscow Conservatory’s Rachmaninov Hall, as well as in the Kammermusiksaal and the Joseph Joachim Concert Hall of the Berlin University of the Art.